Green light for North Sea energy projects
What I’m saying. You can see this in newspapers and tv news reports every day – on the one hand uh oh climate change, on the other hand yay more oil.
More than £8bn of North Sea energy projects could now be given the green light rapidly as fossil fuel firms take advantage of a tax break in Rishi Sunak’s windfall tax, analysts have forecast.
…
However, campaigners warned ramping up North Sea production risked hindering efforts to tackle climate change. Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “The financial stimulus offered by the chancellor to encourage more oil and gas exploration means projects teetering on the edge of approval or rejection are now looking more likely.
“If there was ever confusion about whether the UK is a climate leader or laggard this has certainly removed all doubt. The science couldn’t be clearer that new oil and gas is incompatible with a safe and livable planet.”
But more oil and gas is now. Climate disaster is tomorrow. We have to pick now, every time.
When I took environmental economics, this was basically the point of the class. Cutting down trees now will be worth more than the future, because, look, this is how we do discounting. Never mind that we don’t actually know that we’re doing discounting accurately; cut them down now.
Same with everything. If you make the money today, you can invest it or save it, and have more tomorrow. The planet has value only insofar as it is harvested for resources.
You might guess, I hated that class.
iknklast, I wish that I could heart-react your comment@1. I’m still stuck in a facebook mindset, even though I’ve been banned for 30 days from it. (For saying “men are violent”.)
You can always <3 !
Ecojustice, representing the Sierra Club Canada Foundation, World Wildlife Fund Canada, and Ecology Action Centre, is appealing a Canadian Federal Court decision (17 January 2022) upholding a Regional Assessment (RA) of exploratory oil and gas drilling marine ecosystems off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Adam Vaughan has other news about undersea energy in recent issues of the New Scientist.
The One Sun One World One Grid has the backing of more than 80 countries including Australia, U.K. and U. S., part of a movement to create regional and, eventually, global “supergrids”, long-distance, high DC (rather than AC which has greater transmission losses) voltage cables linking each country’s renewable power output. Local weather makes the power generated by wind and solar variable and location intermittent, but this becomes less of an issue if the grid is larger and distributed over a wider geographical area. High voltage, long distance electricity cables linking renewable energy projects in Morocco to the UK, and Austrailia to Singapore, are already being planned.
2022 may see progress to build an “energy island” of wind farms in the North Sea. In 2022 UK startup Xlinks will try to persuade the UK government to guarantee a minimum price for electricity generated at a mega wind and solar farm in Morocco that could power UK homes via a 3800 km undersea cable. Xlinks is also working with Australian Sun Cable tp build the world’s largest solar farm in northern Australia and connect it wih Singapore through a 4200 km cable. A 720 km subsea North Sea Link from Kvilldal near Stavanger, Norway to Blyth, Northumberland, UK will reach 1400 MW for 1.4 million homes.
And “tomorrow” gets closer all the time.
iknklast #1
“this is how we do discounting.”
https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/11/05/decarbonisation-at-a-discount-lets-not-sell-future-generations-short/